A Worrier's Guide to a Balding Head

The inevitability of it all is what slugs the most. A head martyred for bloodlines, this inherited shine. Where for now my follicleless sheddings? Yet still is your lifeless production required, appease my vanity, allow truth to this delusion . . .

Oh dear.

Is there much to be gained in these pills my brother recommended? Does it really curb a loss or merely perpetuate a twilight - an everpresent Northern Star guiding eyes to a truer progression.

My Lord.

Is this some sort of evolutionary trick? A genetic predisposition to a balding head inherited via a mother blissfully unaware. Oh offspring-that-will-never-happen, love will not be the choosing of your mother. No: Marry a pretty girl after seeing her mother's brother.

Now.

In the trail of its' waste I learn the techniques of hair-gel: A parting with authority, a suggestive ruffledness. My life it instills regiment in: Shower daily (minimize noticeability); exercise more often (maximize alternative features); eat well (offset non-inherited physical deteriorations); socialize inclusively (maintain a potential of a future unalone).

So . . .

. . . this synthetic inhibitor, this intracellular enzyme - this Finasteride I'm beholden to make good your web brief. Spare me, like the lab mice, any carcinogenic effect. And likewise make mutagenesis a term confined to data sheets. Like tested rabbits allow me the fecundity to choose or not choose those offspring-that-will-never-happen. Oh conquering Finasteride, make banishment upon that stunting Dihydrotesterone. Let us regain those spoiled follicles to their spindling glory: Let locks flow in no comb-over and no forehead recline.

But my hair still recedes and I am falling apart.

Man-Boobs

I gotta get something off my chest, and that something is my man-boobs. I’m not talking an exclamation, like, "Hey, man — boobs!" I’m talking man-boobs. I got junk with a side of jugs, and I ain’t happy about it.

Three years ago, I got two things: a girlfriend and a real job. And then I got two more things: a supple pair of he-breasts. With a steady lady and some steady employment, I left the old me behind. No more appetite-suppressing drug orgies. No more eating once every 36 hours. No more nutrient-starved immune response and the subsequent weight-purging illnesses. I traded that life in, and what’d I get in return? Male-mammaries.

It’s time for a change. I need a way to deflate these Pat-pillows. I like my new life. I like being a contributing member of society. I like feeling like a whole person. I just wish the whole me didn’t come with these boy-bags.

How to get rid of these testosterone-titties? I supposed I could exercise, or stop drinking beer. Right. I could also be Santa Claus. "Could" doesn’t make it so.

Maybe I just need to come to terms with my man-boobs. I could start a club for men with guy-knockers and declare myself president. Then I could do commercials like the Hair Club for Men ones. "I’m not only the Dude-Rack Club president. I’m also a client."

If my gentleman-jigglies lactated, I could solve world hunger. I bet there’s a stem-cell researcher out there looking for a challenge. If I double my beer intake and renounce walking altogether, I could grow my he-jugs so big, I could house the world’s homeless, too. Habitat for Huge-Man-Titties.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe my calling is to use my endowment for the greater good. If only God would give me a sign. Like a birthmark on my pseudo-sacks in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Man. Boobs.

Small Histories

Being a continuation of Bridget's Story.

Give us a young'un there Bridie.

A young'un a half'un with a Guinness head a pint of the black goat's milk - they'd have killed me, Oh Thomais, if I wasn't doing it myself. My son you live it your way this life but beware the cost of living in bars.

A young'un, they'd dog you, for begod the winter's nip is on me. And I'd put on the kettle place a brandy in a glass fill with hot water and two sugars on top. She's a good one this Bridie they'd enthuse no better at all at all as you'd await the price of the drink picking up glasses smiling at their banter playing that role they anoint you and still no payment offered. Forever trying to get the money it'd make you appreciate the gentleman - I think now it was this that endeared me to Dylan.

We were mutually acquainted - you were now four years old - and he could not be more different from these rattling half-witted shams. Although I've blamed him for much I'd forgive him more but son you'll learn love is oft' not the thing that you sought.

I knew that he liked me when he came in the bar - why else would he young and not at ease sit and order a drink in a place of raucous pretenders and self-aggrandizing men. But he sat and had a drink he waited and did not barge and when he paid I took his money and right back I returned it to him. It was in that bar - the Shebeen - that a possibility of something else protruded through the cracks of a life I'd long despaired as already squandered.

You may think me errant my son but you should know back then it was hard for me to keep myself but you, Thomais, the thought of you I blitzed with Hennessey and Powers Jameson and Smirnoff stolen bottles and pocketed nagans allowing your grandmother who I barely acknowledged the irretrievable years I hid in falsehood the gift of having you near and aiding you grow. I was young, my love, just twenty and you already a fouryearold boy. And though some would entreat me I grew up too fast truly it was not so: a girl with a history like a kid with a death may preclude herself voluntarily or be let known her place.

Yet the truth of this he made me wonder before ultimately proving it so.

Gimme Gimme: Cover Bands and the "One Pint" Question

I work with a woman named Michele. Shortly after my first day on the job, Michele invited me and the rest of the department out to a bar to have a drink and see her husband, Gif, and his cover band play. This particular performance was of note, as Michele would be performing back-up vocals on a handful of their songs … or, more accurately, their renditions of other people’s songs.

There are two things in this world to which I never say no. The first is a drink.

Before I continue, I should note that I use the term “a drink” in the more literal, American sense, referring to a single alcoholic beverage. This is not to be confused with the Irish “a drink” or, more commonly, “a pint,” both figurative terms with effectively no weight. I learned this vernacular peculiarity in Ireland in the company of young Irish people, many of whom I would come to count among my closest friends. After only a short time, it became plain to me that the pub is, to the Irish, an all-purpose solution to almost any contingency — a one-stop fix for just about every manner of inconvenience — and the term “a pint” its primary instrument of implementation. To even the casual observer, it doesn’t take long to notice that, no matter where you are in Ireland, you are never more than one-quarter mile from a bar, and that this fact can actually alleviate the need to carry an umbrella, a watch, a lunch, a girlfriend or basically anything that is not money or some other item that can be offered in exchange for alcohol.

Allow me to present as evidence a few examples. Suppose Persons A and B are walking down a typical Irish avenue when rain begins to fall. Person A is the first to notice the precipitation and turns to Person B to point out this discovery, at which point Person B recommends waiting out the storm in the nearest pub with “a pint.” Or perhaps Person A is supposed to meet Person B at a mutually agreed location and time. As neither Person A nor Person B, being Irish, suffers from the particularly American preoccupation with punctuality, they agree that whoever arrives first should go to the nearest pub and await the arrival of the other with “a pint.” Or let us presuppose a more dramatic scenario, in which Person A is Person B’s significant other, or was, for the two have just had a falling-out on a city street and have ended their romantic association. Person A is understandably distraught and lamenting his new found singleness when Person C, a friend, approaches, hears of what has just transpired, and promptly ushers Person A into the nearest pub to talk it out over “a pint.”

At first glance, the situations described above seem fairly universal. Certainly bars have for centuries and all around the freely imbibing world provided refuge from the weather, the passage of time, or the sadness of a lost love. What sets the Irish experience apart is that seemingly innocuous term, “a pint.” In Ireland, it is quickly learned that the Irish believe a single serving of alcohol to be either evil or imaginary, for never once in Ireland, at any time of day or night, did I have “a pint” with an Irish person that was not then followed by another — indeed, in most cases, by another few. Thus, what on the surface seems a revolutionary remedy for all of life’s little figurative hiccups is in fact the origin of a series of many more actual hiccups and a virtual guarantee that your productivity has been curtailed for the day. In short, if you have anything important to do whilst in Ireland, stay home and do it, because if you are out and it rains, it will not get done at all.

As I was saying, there are two things I will never turn down: a drink and the opportunity to hear a bitchin’ cover band perform. I am pro-cover band because in their efforts to entertain the greatest possible number of people at one time, cover bands play music that everybody knows and can sing along with. I use the catchall “everybody” loosely, assuming that most people understand that infant children, deaf-mutes, stroke victims and any others who have lost or not yet developed the powers of speech are excluded from the sing-a-long-enabled. Incidentally, the number of people counted among this group is in constant flux. Young children are singing their first songs every day, just as, everyday, previously sing-a-long-capable people are dying, falling ill or becoming too drunk to continue singing. I am reminded of one such event that involved myself, again in Ireland, in which a group of friends and I were in Galway’s the Roisin Dubh listening to a particularly moving cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” at which point the ecstasy began to take effect and, mixed with the large quantity off beer and vodka I had already consumed, caused me to black out, unable to sing, or at least unaware of any singing in which I may have been engaging.

Gif’s band lived up to all expectations. Upon taking the stage, all members of the band proceeded to rock out, and Michele provided stirring back-up vocals, her rendition of the “gimme gimme” sample on Weezer’s hit single “Beverly Hills” being her greatest achievement on the night. All in all, a fine performance contributed to an equally fine evening.

The other day, I asked Michele how the band was doing. I was dismayed to learn that they had broken up, much like Persons A and B in the tragic love story we examined above. I asked Michele what had led to this sad turn of events.

“They were experiencing creative differences.”

Creative differences. In a cover band. A group of musicians united specifically under the mission of playing other people’s music, thus eliminating the need to write, compose or, yes, create anything. I felt I was missing something. Perhaps, never having been a professional or even an amateur performing musician, I am not privy to some generative consideration that even those who have taken it upon themselves to play other people’s music must grapple with. If that is the case, then I fear I may never fully wrap my mind around this concept. Nonetheless, I will continue to wrestle with it, and maybe, with diligence, one night, after many "a pint," it will become clear to me. Or the ecstasy will kick in.

Trick or Treat

Would the concept of holidays lose all meaning in a world of the shambling undead?

Last week, amid the costumed frivolity of Halloween weekend, I couldn't help but wonder whether we would all still feel so compelled to mask our faces, bare our midriffs, and adorn ourselves in wardrobes exceeding the gaudiest imaginings of our non-holiday spirits if our drunken merrymaking was punctuated by the periodic pounding of rotting fists against fortified doors, woven into the incessant background hum of hollow, mindless moaning and choked attempts at generating sound from long-decayed windpipes. Would pumpkin-scented votive candles do anything to combat the stifling musk of decomposing human flesh that rises off their hordes like an unintentional biological weapon, heralding their approach and sending that by-now-familiar tingle of nausea flowering from your nasal cavities into your brain and through your nerves until your extremities tingle with anticipatory horror? Would such attempts at seasonal potpourri and extravagant revelry even be wise, given the constant threat of being torn limb from limb and forced to watch as you are devoured alive, helpless to keep the frenzied mob of animated corpses from ripping open your stomach and fighting over your intestines like starving dogs stumbling upon a pile of linked sausages resting unattended in a snowy clearing.

It's a question that I struggle with. But the psychological kind of struggle--not the fighting for your life in a foul-smelling hand-to-stump deathmatch kind. Not yet, at least.

On the one hand, there's the obvious risk--costumed morsels are morsels nonetheless in the empty eyes of the walking dead, but if we let the zombies cow us into forgetting bastardized Pagan holiday festivities, doesn't that mean the zombies have won? Don't we owe it to our children and our children's fallout-mutated children to preserve those things that make us different from our eternally vigilant enemies? Aside from the obvious, of course.

I think I, for one, would be decked out in my Halloween finest, or at least whatever extravagant clothing I had been able to loot from nearby stores and residences the previous winter, when the frigid New England weather dulled the ever-present threat of being devoured by the animated corpses of my former friends and neighbors. I'd dress my children in chain mail and muted tones of nylon fabric, being careful not to leave an inch of skin exposed (just in case I let my guard down and allow some errant ghoul to get the drop on us), and we’d be on our way, giddily trick-or-treating our way through the apocalyptic landscape. Sure, the kids would have to be content with a bagful of dead insects, since the neighborhood’s candy supplies had long since dried up, and we might have to be particularly stealthy over on North Street, where Zeke, the ex-convict, self-proclaimed “Mayor of Stinktown” has set up shop with his ragtag band of motorcycle vigilantes, but as I felt the crunch of yet another shattered skull cleaved by the weight of my axe, I’d be smiling inside and saying “Happy Halloween, ya putrid flesh-eating stinkfuckers.”

C’mon kids, let’s see whether your mom's still alive. Don't eat all your dead insects tonight. You'll get a tummy-ache.

Bridget's Story

Oh Thomais, blame not your poor mother for the cruelties of your life. My son if I could give it this beating pumping mass of cells arranged in chambered muscles pulsing existence through those racing limbs this organ they call a heart I would - oh life of my love forgive that pregnant child whose inadequacies dealt to you a heart too soon born to a world she had yet to learn herself. It is to you I divulge these words, for it is to you I have always - even when as that girl who could never have guessed a future not involving the triumphant realisation of all that she deserved - willed these expressions upon, for you are more I than that foolish girl ever was. No, fate was not to deal your mother a life in tow to an unafraid man. He that gave me you - and my son you must not hate him - was a man as much as I a woman: even the young sycamore can propel it's seed and regenerate, yet are those roots not loosened in times of storm and that trunk not snapped when tested? It is now clear to me just how ill-fated it was always going to be. But Thomais, you were born of passion of excesses in a jolted awakening. Thomais, my son, thou vision of mine eye - from no jaded loins were you begotten, and from no weakened heart shall you be surrendered. My life my love I commit to writing these small histories and in so doing absolve all obligation from you, my purest of reflections.